Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley
When she was 13 years old, she was captured and sent to Cuba, where she was purchased by, impregnated by, and married, in a native ceremony, to Zephaniah Kingsley, a slave trader and plantation owner.
Kingsley freed Anna Jai in 1811, when she turned 18, and gave her responsibilities for his plantations in East Florida, then under Spanish colonial rule.
After the United States took control of Florida and American discriminatory laws threatened the multi-racial Kingsley family, most of them moved to Haiti.
She was born Anta Majigueen Ndiaye in 1793 in present-day Senegal, in a portion of West Africa that was disrupted by a fierce war between the majority Wolof people and the minority Fula.
Slave raids were frequent occurrences during incessant violence that left many small villages deserted, as people were abducted to be sold into slavery or they fled in fear for their lives.
Wolof tradition holds that a mythological figure named Njaajaan Ndiaye established the Jolof Kingdom that existed between 1200 and 1550.
"[5][3]: 25 Schafer, who supports this version, suggests that Anta was sent to Gorée Island, a slave embarcation point from the West African coast to the Americas.
When Africans arrived in the Western Hemisphere to be sold into slavery, slave traders generally did not record their given names, but only their age, sex, and sometimes ethnicity, which were most important to buyers.
[citation needed] In contrast, according to Kathleen Wu, writing in 2009, Kingsley sought a wife in Africa, and his story of his having bought her in Cuba was false, intended to strengthen her credentials as free.
Kingsley had become a citizen of Spanish Florida in 1803, likely because it allowed him to continue his international slave trading, at a time when Great Britain and the United States were moving to prohibit it (which they did in 1807).
"[14] In his will, he said "she has always been respected as my wife and as such I acknowledge her, nor do I think that her truth, honor, integrity, moral conduct or good sense will lose in comparison with anyone.
[16] Slavery within African societies, generally as a result of capture during warfare, was a custom with which Anna would probably have been familiar, including the fact that female slaves often married their masters in order to obtain freedom.
[17] Kingsley was kidnapped the same year and held until he endorsed the Patriot Rebellion, an unsuccessful insurgency by Americans to annex Florida to the United States.
Americans and American-supplied Creek Indians raided towns and plantations in (north) Florida, sending any blacks they captured into slavery, regardless of their legal status.
To evade the Americans, Anna approached the Spanish and negotiated her escape, bringing along her children and a dozen slaves.
While the slave quarters and various other buildings were being rebuilt, Anna moved in, taking over managing the plantation while Kingsley was away on business.
Called the "Ma'am Anna House", this followed the common West African custom of wives' living separately from their husbands, particularly in polygamous marriages.
Anthropologists suggest that Anna may have had the knowledge to instruct her slaves how to form the tabby because it was widely used in West Africa.
Author Daniel Schafer hypothesized that Anna may have been responsible for the layout of the slave quarters: many African villages were similarly arranged in circular patterns.
[3]: 55 In 1824, Anna bore her fourth son, John, who was baptized in a Catholic ceremony with the daughter of another of Kingsley's wives.
In all, 60 slaves, family members, and freed employees moved with Kingsley to Haiti to farm a plantation called Mayorasgo de Koka.
Because slavery was prohibited in Haiti, Kingsley converted his slaves to indentured servants, who could earn their freedom with another nine years of labor.
[8] One of the laws passed by the Territorial Council of Florida that so alarmed Kingsley was the provision that mixed-race children could not inherit property from their fathers.
Anna returned to Florida in 1846 to participate in the Kingsley estate defense, despite the increasingly tense racial climate in Duval County.
Anna furthermore asked for and was granted the transfer of ownership of slaves who had been sent to the San Jose plantation when the family had moved to Haiti.
[22] Anna Kingsley has descendants that identify as white, Black, and/or Latino (of any race) and live primarily in the United States and the Dominican Republic.
[23] Music The Original Song: Anta Majigeen Njaay- written and performed by Jennifer Chase with Les Frères Guissé (1998) recorded at Studio 2000, Dakar Senegal.
